Rating:

4.0 (4 votes)

ST. IGNATIUS- A scene straight out of a Western movie stampeded through modern-day Montana: a man jumped onto a running horse and tried to stop it without reins or stirrups. And the real-life ending couldn't have been scripted better.

St. Ignatius is one place where the pace is still a little slower and the good ol' days aren't too far gone.

"Country life," 20-year St. Ignatius resident Laura Koyle said. "You know, nobody gets really excited or really in a hurry or anything. I mean, it's pretty calm, most of the time."

Monday night was the exception. Dustin Burckhard, 29, noticed something outside the window of the Old Timer Café, where he works. He noticed an unattended horse and buggy tied up to the fence, about to break free.

"We were actually just getting ready to go and fix her bridle and kinda tie her up a little when she busted loose," Burckhard said. "I said, let's go see if we can just kinda slow her down and catch her."

Easier said than done. Midnight the mare had no plans of stopping. She and the buggy went flying down the road to home.

"She went down through the ditch and back up, she's a smart pony, she didn't wanna stop," Burckhard said.

But on a busy road, Burckhard knew if he didn't do something, the pony would be in trouble.

"A horse on the loose on the highway, it's gonna hurt," he said. "She gonna hit something, not gonna be pretty."

Witnesses saw the horse and buggy side-swipe three cars. Burckhard, a horse lover, knew he had to hop on to the horse to get it to stop. He instructed his coworker, Tim Ranel, 15, to take the wheel and drive as close as he could to the buggy so he could mount up.

Ranel just got his driver's license that day.

"I hopped on the running boards and held onto the roof rack," he said. He jumped into the moving buggy.

"I was able to reach down and grab one of the lead reins, and start pulling on 'em and then I noticed, well, she didn't have a bridle on, so all I was pullin' was just the chest harness," he said.

When that didn't work, he hopped forward onto the running horse.

"I was able to finally grab her ear, yanked on her hard and we came into the driveway," Burckhard said. "I was tryin to get her other ear to stop her and as I reached for the right ear, she went left and I went off."

But the pony was out of harm's way and Burckhard became the talk of the town.

"One of the customers goes, ‘Hey, John Wayne, Junior, huh?' I seen a lotta Westerns, I never thought I'd be doin' the same stupid thing somebody else did," he said. "I probably woulda done it maybe a little differently Maybe woulda waited a little before I jumped out of the rig onto her."

"It was quite excitement for a little town like this," Koyle said.

Midnight the horse made it home healthier than Burckhard who went to the doctor with torn ligaments in his left knee and a potentially fractured ankle.